Many business entities, such as financial institutions or the like, implement a multitude of business platforms and each of the business platforms may require that a customer log-in as a means of identifying themselves as an authorized user of the business platform. However, in many instances the business platforms are configured to allow the customer to identify themselves using platform-specific customer identifiers. For example, in the financial institution scenario, a customer may log-in with a social security number for an interactive voice response (IVR) platform, and the same customer may log-in to an online banking platform using an online banking identifier (e.g., user name or the like). Moreover, the same customer may have many other identifiers specific to the platforms they interface with.
The use of multiple customer identifiers becomes problematic when trying to determine if a customer interfacing with one platform using one identifier is the same customer accessing another platform using another identifier. Such a need to determine customer identity, and moreover determine identity positively, meaning without reasonable doubt, is especially relevant in financial institution, which track/monitor customer activity as a means of uncovering suspicious activity. However, if the customer tracking/monitoring system is unable to determine that a customer interfacing with one platform is the same customer interfacing with another platform, the resulting monitoring results will invariably be incomplete and inaccurate.
In current practice, much manual intervention is needed to positively identify that a customer interfacing with one platform using a first identifier is the same customer that is interfacing with a second platform using a second identifier. This is because the customer data tied to the platform-defined customer identifier (i.e., data stored in the customer's system of record (SOR) associated with that particular platform) is typically incomplete, outdated, inaccurate and/or otherwise not prone to correlation due to system configurations, data field lengths and the like. As such, analysts must painstakingly analyze data within different system of records before a customer can be positively identified as the same customer interfacing with two separate platforms using separate platform-specific customer identifiers.
Therefore, a need exists to create an automated system for positively identifying that a customer interfacing with one platform via a platform-specific customer identifier is the same customer that interfaces with another platform using another application-specific identifier. Based on such a determination a world-wide customer federated identifier may be automatically generated. The federated identifier may be applied to all of the platforms across the enterprise, so as to positively identify the customer regardless of the identifier they use for interfacing with any platform associated with the business entity.